Moving the money

[SK_Punter]

OK, so...

what are the do's and don't when managing your bankroll for matched betting?

Given how tight some margins are it seems that transfer fees and exchange charges could make life very difficult (harder than the actual work of matched betting)

Neteller, Moneybooker et al. are fine but how do you minimise charges when you play in £,$ and € and need to move money form bookie to bookie or exchange etc.?

Should I just not worry or should i have a plan?

[munk]

Well I'm still trying to work out the best way of dealing with foreign currency still and it's a real pain.

Aall I can do is say that for my main GBP banking what I do is keep a 'reserve' balance in my bank so I always have enough in case I need to deposit money in a hurry (usually into betfair when I realize I've backed something at long odds and don't have enough to cover it in betfair!). Generally the reserve always stays the same - if I deposit/withdraw from one place, I have to deposit/withdraw from somewhere else to make sure the reserve stays the same... has worked pretty well for me for a long time now but I suppose it depends how disciplined you are as to whether you keep that reserve level.

I use MS Money as well to keep track of banking and one tip I would give for anyone using MS Money is whenever you make a transfer to/from your account in money but it won't go through for a few days, set the year of the transaction to one year ahead in Money - that way it's easy to see what transactions are outstanding and to make sure you check up on them.

Another tip is to use the pence part of a deposit/withdrawal amount to indicate what date you made the transaction - so for example today if I was withdrawing £100, I'd withdraw £100.24 to indicate it was the 24th I made the transfer. Might not sound that useful and takes a bit to get used to (and I don't usually do it if I'm just withdrawing the whole balance from somewhere), but if you make a lot of banking transactions every day it is actually pretty useful as a reminder when a transaction was made without having to go through your accounts to find out (especially when you're reconciling bank statements).

Moneybookers - I'd say if you're hitting your transaction limit quite regularly go ahead and ask for VIP status. Search for threads tagged with moneybookers vip for more info on that.

Well.. I just realized none of what I typed answers your questions regarding minimizing charges - there was a post recently about keeping moneybookers charges down by using the merchant's site to deposit money into the merchant's site via moneybookers, that's a pretty good tip.

As for forex fees, I'm a newbie to using USD on moneybookers but already finding it a massive PITA what with their forex rates being so high when you transfer from GBP into USD. The only solution to that I can think of is to try not to have to deposit from GBP to USD more than you need to - ie don't match USD books against GBP books so USD money stays 'pooled' in the USD 'system' as it were and whatever you do don't withdraw from USD to GBP if you can avoid it (pension anyone?!).

[Andy]

The way I do it is:

I got a Neteller account in $s, fund it once with a chunk of money and have never needed to invest any more money since. From there I funded a $s Betfair account and new/existing bookmaker accounts. Let the $s move about around those, the Net $s amount will just grow, I havnt really turned it back to £s and dont intend to until i stop betting, im just going to let it grow and take the exchange rate when i do withdaw and be happy at that. There is still sometimes fees to withdraw from places but i am not hit by currency movements or exchange fees.

I have a £s Debit card account and a £s Visa Credit card I use solely for betting, this has my main bankroll, i use which ever is cheapest at the time, if they are both free I use the credit card to allow a "Chargeback" should the worst happen. This is for all £s sites. I also use these for Euro sites and just take the charges on the chin, its why i dont do Euro offers of less than 50% bonus.

Overall though the fees are just a cost of doing business, set your stakes to take that into account (ie underlay) and you will be compensated should you have to pay them.

[munk]

What are the exchange rates like for Neteller, similar to Moneybookers? Mind I'll probably stick with MB now I set up the USD account there... just a fscker that I deposited into betjoint with GBP MB account, forgetting I'd have to withdraw to there (which is looking like a right pita now I can't stop winning at betjoint).

[Andy]

What are the exchange rates like for Neteller.

Im not sure i only ever deposit and withdraw $s for $s. I should imagine its the same as moneybookers rates though.

[SK_Punter]

My problem really is that I setup my Neteller account in GBP 5 years ago when I began playing poker. My earn and margins meant that forex rates didnt matter... I could afford it basically so I just thought of it as a cost of doing business.

Now though I rarely use Neteller for poker so I lost my VIP status (all transactions were chrge free, and forex rates were reduced)

Now I've started matched betting and I regret having my Neteller account in GBP. I have a moneybookers account in $ though.

I guess I should try and treat each line of funds as a seperate entity for now and fund UK bookies from Neteller and US ones from Moneybookers where ever possible.

Unless anyone can suggest a decent reliable thrid payment provider that supports € I guess I'll just take a forex hit on EU accounts.

Thanks for responses

[Andy]

Neteller will let you change the account from £s to $s, i did that years and years ago when i started the $s adventure, it was the policy then you could definitely NOT have two accounts but you can ONCE swap the currency the account is denominated in. You could swap Neteller from £s to Euros I suppose if Mbookers has $s covered for you?

Moneybookers you can have two accounts and two currencies if you get VIP status, you can apply by asking or they offer it to you if you start turning over 10k+ a month.

[munk]

I guess I should try and treat each line of funds as a seperate entity for now and fund UK bookies from Neteller and US ones from Moneybookers where ever possible.

Unless anyone can suggest a decent reliable thrid payment provider that supports € I guess I'll just take a forex hit on EU accounts.

I use Nationwide Flex debit card for any Euro transactions who don't charge for forex transactions... I've not used them that much yet though so will see how their rates really are soon.

[SK_Punter]

I use Nationwide Flex debit card for any Euro transactions who don't charge for forex transactions... I've not used them that much yet though so will see how their rates really are soon.

Sweet. I'll have to find a Nationwide branch now.

[munk]

Sweet. I'll have to find a Nationwide branch now.

I would definitely recommend that over doing it on internet - took them 4 months faffing around with my internet application before I got fed up waiting (terrible phone support) and finally went into my local branch to get it sorted (was done there and then).